As the Internet and other forms of remote communication become more prevalent, more and more service providers are allowing new customers or users to register for access to products or services remotely. Frequently, users are asked to enroll one of their existing financial accounts into a back end system. For example, a user may want to link a credit card account to an Internet service (such as PayPal®). As another example, a user may wish to associate their checking account with a service (such as a rewards system, PayPal® or the like). Prior to allowing such association, service providers must accurately and carefully authenticate the user and the user's right to access the account to be associated.
A number of techniques have been used for such authentication. For example, when a PayPal® customer wishes to link a bank account to his or her PayPal account, PayPal requires that the user authenticate their ownership of the bank account by confirming two small deposit amounts that are made by PayPal into the user's bank account. By confirming the amounts, the user authenticates her ownership or access to the bank account. Unfortunately, such authentication takes time (sometimes up to several days after the user requested access to the new financial service).
It would be desirable to provide systems and methods that would allow user authentication to be performed substantially in real-time during the course of a registration transaction.